After Tragedy Strikes

While trauma and loss can occur anywhere, most suffering is experienced as personal tragedy. Yet some tragedies transcend everyday life's sad but inevitable traumas to become notorious public events: de facto "public" tragedies. In these crises, suffering is made publicly visible and lamentable. Such tragedies are defined by public accusations, social blame, outpourings of grief and anger, spontaneous memorialization, and collective action. These, in turn, generate a comparable set of political reactions, including denial, denunciation, counterclaims, blame avoidance, and a competition to control memories of the event.

Disasters and crises are no more or less common today than in the past, but public tragedies now seem ubiquitous. After Tragedy Strikes argues that they are now epochal—public tragedies have become the day's definitive social and political events. Thomas D. Beamish deftly explores this phenomenon by developing the historical context within which these events occur and the role that political elites, the media, and an emergent ideology of victimhood have played in cultivating their ascendence.

Thomas D. Beamish is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis, and author of Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis and Community at Risk: Biodefense and the Collective Search for Security.

Contents

List of Illustrations 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction: The Politics of Public Tragedy 

1. A World at Risk: Modernity, Vulnerability, and Public Tragedy 

2. The Political Construction of Public Tragedy: Crisis and Political Communications in an Age of Blame 

3. The Media’s Role in Public Tragedy: A New Communication Ecology, Trauma Script, and Trauma Reporting 

4. Advocating Public Tragedy: Sympathy, Celebrity, and Tragic Harms 

Conclusion: Why Claims of Trauma and Loss
Promote Public Outrage and Encourage
Political Polarization 

Appendix: Notes on Data Collection
and Media Analysis 

References 
Index